|
- 1890
|
Conference organized in Germany on the Zigeunergeschmeiss
("Gypsy scum"). Military empowered to regulate movements of
Gypsies. |
| 1899 |
The Central Office for Fighting the Gypsy Nuisance is established, and
documents begin to be collected on Romani history, and on the Gypsy population in Germany.
The Bavarian police create a special "Gypsy Affairs Unit" in the same year. |
| 1909 |
A policy conference on "The Gypsy Question" is held, and the
recommendation made that all Gypsies be branded with easy identification. |
| 1920 |
Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche, introduce the notion of "lives
unworthy of life," suggesting that Gypsies should be sterilized and eliminated as a
people. This notion, with the same name, is incorporated into Nazi race theory in 1933. |
| 1922 |
(And throughout the 1920s): All Gypsies in German territories are to be
photographed and fingerprinted. |
| 1926 |
A July 16 law is directed at controlling the "Gypsy plague."
This treatment is in direct violation of the terms of the Weimar Constitution. |
| 1927 |
In Bavaria, special camps are built to incarcerate Gypsies. Eight
thousand Gypsies are processed in this way. |
| 1928 |
All Gypsies are placed under permanent police surveillance. Professor
Hans Gunther publishes a document in which he claims that "it was the Gypsies who
introduced foreign blood into Europe." More camps are built to contain Gypsies. |
| 1930 |
Recommendation made that all Gypsies be sterilized. |
| 1933 |
Nazis introduce a law to legalize eugenic sterilization. This is
specifically named as written to control "Gypsies and most of the Germans of black
color," these latter the descendants of the unions between African soldiers and
Europeans from the period of the 1914-1918 War. |
| 1934 |
Gypsies are being selected from January onwards for sterilization by
injection and castration, and being sent to camps at Dachau, Dieselstrasse, Sachsenhausen
and elsewhere. Two laws issued in this year forbid Germans from marrying "Jews,
Gypsies and Negroes." |
| 1935 |
Gypsies become subject to the restriction of the Nuremberg Law for the
Protection of Blood and Honor. Marriage with white people is forbidden. Criteria defining
who is Gypsy are exactly twice as strict as those defining any other group. |
| 1938 |
Between June 12th and 18th, Zigeuneraaufraumungswoche ("Gypsy
clean-up week") takes place, when hundreds of Gypsies throughout Germany and Austria
are arrested, beaten, and imprisoned. Gypsies are first targeted population to be
forbidden to attend school. Himmler’s recommendation that certain Roma be kept alive
in a compound under the Law for the Protection of Historic Monuments for anthropologists
to study, is ridiculed and never implemented. |
| 1939 |
Nazi party decree states that "the aim of the measures taken by the
state must be the racial separation once and for all of the Gypsy race from the German
nation, then the prevention of racial mixing." The Office of Racial Hygiene issues a
statement saying "All Gypsies should be treated as hereditarily sick; the only
solution is elimination. The aim should therefore be the elimination without hesitation of
this defective element in the population." |
| 1940 |
The first mass genocidal action of the Holocaust takes place in January
of this year, when 250 Romani children are used as guinea pigs to test the cyanide gas
crystal, at the concentration camp at Buchenwald. Employment of any kind is forbidden to
Gypsies in this same year. |
| 1941 |
Gypsies are the first targeted population to be forbidden to serve in the
army. Eight hundred Roma are murdered in one action on the night of December 24 in the
Crimea. On July 31of this year, Heydrich, "Head of the Reich Main Security Office and
leading organizational architect of the Nazi Final Solution," puts the machinery of
the Endlosung into operation with his directive to the Einsatzkommandos to "kill all
Jews, Gypsies and mental patients." The Holocaust begins. |
| 1944 |
In the early hours of the August 1, four thousand Roma are gassed and
incinerated at Auschwitz-Birkenau in one mass action, remembered by survivors as
Zigeunernacht. |
| 1945 |
By the end of the war, between 70% and 80% of the Romani population had
been annihilated by Nazis. No Roma were called to testify at the Nuremberg Trials, and no
one came forth to testify on their behalf. No war crimes reparations have been paid to the
Roma as a people. |
| 1950 |
First of many statements over the years to follow, made by the German
government, that they owe nothing to the Romani people by way of war crimes reparations. |
| 1992 |
Germany sells Romani asylum seekers back to Romania for $21 million, and
begins shipping them in handcuffs on November 1. Some Roma commit suicide rather than go.
The German press agency asks western journalists not to use the word
"deportation" in their coverage of this, because that word has
"uncomfortable historical associations." |
This brief chronology was condensed from "Gypsy History in Germany and Neighboring
Lands: A Chronology to the Holocaust and Beyond," in Nationalities Papers,
19(3):395-412(1991), a special issue on Gypsies.
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Roma
Participation Program
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